Robert Kippur was born in 1944 and lived in complete isolation in a ground floor apartment on West 22nd St. A bus driver by day, his vitriolic temper left him with virtually no friends and estranged from his family. In his solitude, he
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Robert Kippur was born in 1944 and lived in complete isolation in a ground floor apartment on West 22nd St. A bus driver by day, his vitriolic temper left him with virtually no friends and estranged from his family. In his solitude, he was tormented by crippling nightmares.
He expressed these nightmares and feelings of isolation through his art, initially at the urging of his therapist. After his death, the City of New York took custody of his possessions, and the collection was revealed to a private network of art dealers in conjunction with the sale of the apartment. A large body of massive works — in some cases as large as 16 x 9 feet — depict his disturbing internal torment . In his parallel world, the viewer is not merely a spectator to the macabre, but also immersed as a participant, as the artist must have been.
Kippur, an art school reject, was completely self-taught. His painterly brushstrokes are paired with colors so vibrant they border on the distorted. Figures in electric purples, greens, and pallid yellows partake in distorted orgies of dual mutilation and ecstasy, looking away from one another in agony like contemporary version’s of the damned in Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” or Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement”.
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